His smile had the power to cut just as cruelly as that small knife he’d used to open the wine, and that he now put back in his pocket. He stood. ‘Think on that, while you seek to protect him from justice. I am not myself without mercy, you’ll find, but I can do nothing to help you if you put the noose round your neck by your own choice.’ Setting down the bottle on the table, he said, ‘Take you good care of that fire I have made for you, Mistress O’Cleary. ’Twould grieve me to see you get burnt.’
I did not stand myself, nor look round as he left. The truth was that I’d started shaking too badly to stand. It was only the after-effect of the fear I had felt while he’d been here, my body’s release of the tension I’d had to hold in, and no more. But in spite of the fire that now crackled so warm on the hearth it was some time before I stopped shaking, and even when I finally stood I still felt cold inside.
The wine that he’d left on the table might have helped warm me, but I didn’t want to drink from any bottle he had held. It was as though he had a poison in him that was transferred by his touch and needed to be cleaned away. I took the bottle in my hand and carried it around to the back door where I upended it above the muddy ground.
And then I tilted my face to the rain until I felt clean, too.
The bucket I’d set out before was now half full. I brought it in and locked the door, then hauled the three-legged iron kettle to the hearth and emptied most of the water into it, saving some for drinking later. I’d lost my appetite, but knowing that my hunger would return and that I needed to keep eating to survive till someone came, I sifted barley from the sack into the water and I left it there to boil while I lit a candle and went up to see what damage the constable had done.
My anger returned in full force when I saw the effects of his search. Daniel’s books lay strewn across the study floor, and in the bedrooms there were drawers pulled out and mattresses askew with no attempt made to return the rooms to order. He’d had the time to search and leave no sign of it, I thought, but it was obvious he’d wanted to let Daniel know he’d been here. Why, I didn’t know. If I felt this much anger simply looking at the things that had been tainted by the presence of the constable, it stood to reason Daniel would be furious.
Unless that was the purpose of it all, provoking Daniel to retaliate, because, although I didn’t know the laws of this time, surely there would be a nasty penalty for challenging the king’s own loyal constable. Arrest, at least. And maybe more.
I fought my anger down, lit more candles to bring light into the rooms, and started tidying, returning books to their neat rows and righting chairs and trying hard to make things look the way they had before. I took the greatest care in the small room that had been Daniel’s wife’s, because to me the very thought the constable had been in here among her things seemed unforgivable, an act of violation.
And he had been here. He’d rifled through the clothing in the long box at the foot of the bed, leaving petticoat edges and sleeves hanging out. I restored them to order as best I could, smoothing the dresses in folds with as much care as if they’d belonged to Katrina. ‘I’m sorry,’ I told her, and closed the box gently.
And then I remembered. ‘Oh, Christ,’ I breathed, feeling the drop in the pit of my stomach. Because when I’d changed out of my own clothes into this gown, I had hidden my things at the bottom of one of the boxes that sat by the wall in my bedroom, and if he had taken the time to search this one, then …
‘Dammit.’ I yanked the door open between the two rooms and went through with a feeling of dread.
Both the boxes were closed. And the first one, the one where I’d hidden my clothes, appeared just as it had been before when I opened the lid. On the top were a few white shirts, fine to the touch, and below them two brocaded waistcoats, and then below them were my own things, still folded, with no indication that they’d been disturbed.
It appeared, from a glance round the room, that the constable’s focus in here had been on the small writing desk, to the exclusion of everything else. He had sat at the chair, for it was in a different position than it had been earlier, and when he’d closed the lid part of a paper had caught in the hinge.
I crossed over and opened the lid to release it, to put it back into the tidily organised pile where it had been. It was a short statement of household accounts, written in a strong and heavy hand. Nothing of interest to the constable, apparently, or else he wouldn’t have looked so frustrated when he’d finished with his search.
He’d been looking for something specific, I sensed, and I could feel a bit of satisfaction knowing that he hadn’t found it.
I made very certain the doors were all bolted that night, having forced down a bit of the porridge I’d made and left the rest to cool beside the hearth. It was too much to hope that there’d be anything left of the fire in the morning, in spite of my amateurish efforts to bank it, so I took one of the tall glass chimneys from the sitting room and used it at my bedside as a shield for the one candle I left burning there, in hopes I might be able to use that to start a fire on the hearth if it were necessary.
I took off the bodice and skirt of the gown that had been Daniel’s wife’s, but I left on the simple chemise underneath in an effort to conjure up some of her courage – for it must have taken courage to have slept in this big house with all its shadows when the men were off at sea.
When Katrina had died I’d gone through all her closets as Bill had requested, and sorted a lot of her clothes to be given to charity, but I’d kept the comfort clothes, the ones that she’d most often worn, and in those moments when I missed her most I still found putting on her favourite flowered shirt could bring her close to me.